Please let me know where you
are all coming from |
The prevalence of the Goddard surname
in 1881 and 1998.
The GODDARD
family is one of the oldest of those linked to Mottram-in-Longdendale
in Cheshire and one that is connected in many ways to
my RHODES family. As with many
long established families, the difficulty is proving who
is linked to whom, and in what way. Nothing is more frustrating
than seeing a GODDARD in a Mottram record and thinking
‘it must be one of mine,’ but without being
able to prove a link.
My research so far indicates that my
earliest GODDARD relative was my six times great grandfather,
Thomas GODDARD, born about
1711 in Mottram. He had a son, John,
born about 1741, having been baptised at St Michael’s
on 18 June that year. He married Betty
HIBBERT, daughter of John HIBBERT in 1783 and they had
seven children. Each of these takes me along threads that
lead away from mine, so I shall concentrate on their third
child and my four times great grandfather, Miles
GODDARD.
Miles was born about 1787. When
he was baptised on 20 April 1787, written above the record
in the register on the same date is the word 'Visitation'.
This was when the Bishop would go to the church to ensure
that the Vicar was carrying out his duties correctly. So
it is possible that Miles was baptised by the Bishop, or
at least that the ceremony was overseen by him.
He married Peggy Shepley on 22
August 1810 at St Michael’s. He could write and the
witnesses were John Shaw and it is interesting to speculate
whether he was related to Christopher John Shaw who married
Betty BRADDOCK in 1897.
At the time of the 1841 Census,
Miles described himself as a ‘farmer,’ although
he was then at the Hare and Hounds
public house. (See
tithe map) He became landlord there about 1823, from
the church baptism records for two of his children that
switch from ‘weaver’ to ‘publican’ between
these dates. He took it over from his brother Thomas
after he died, leaving no widow.
Miles died in 1850, but the Hare
and Hounds remained in GODDARD hands for 40 years more,
first through his wife, Peggy,
then son John, his widow, Ellen,
and later grandson Miles. It
appears that the beer was brewed on site from Miles'
will in which he specifically gifts John
his "brewing untensils."
Miles and Peggy
had 12 children, and it is at this point that family lines
become a tad convoluted. Not every detail can be gone into
here, so I shall mention those that appeal to me.
First,
Miles’ first surviving
child and eldest son was John,
born in 1812. He married twice, first to Martha
Hamilton in 1834 and then to Ellen
YELLOTT in 1850. John was working in the mines as a
‘banksman’ in the 1851
Census, but was later describing himself as a ‘farmer’
and ‘publican’ when he took on the Hare and Hounds
on the death of his mother. However, it is his wife that
is of interest.
Ellen YELLOTT
was born in Wadsley/Ecclesfield, Sheffield, about 1813.
She married Joseph SENIOR
in 1835, and they possibly had a child, Sarah Jane, in 1841.
There is no indication that the child survived. But Joseph
did not, and in 1850 Ellen married
John GODDARD. How she came to
Mottram isn’t clear, but they had a son, Henry
Yellott GODDARD, and she went on to become publican
after John’s death in 1875.
So why the interest? In the 1871
and 1881 Censuses, there was an Ellen
YALLOTT living at the Hare and Hounds, in each case
described as ‘niece’ and having been born in Australia.
In the 1881 Census for Matthew
RHODES, husband of John GODDARD’s
sister, Jane, there
is a Herbert YALLOTT,
‘farm servant,’ born Australia, and you can begin
to sense a connection.
It transpires that Ellen
and Herbert were
brother and sister, children of Henry
YELLOTT who emigrated to Australia around 1850 arriving
on 30 September 1852 on board the Ascendant which sailed
from Liverpool. He and his wife Ellen
had eight children, of which at least three died young,
more likely five, but three survived. Their parents died
within 18 months of each other in 1865 and 1866, and somehow,
Ellen, Harriet
and Herbert found
their way home. How they did it is a mystery, but all trekked
to Rochdale eventually. See the Yellott
Mystery.
Miles’
eldest daughter, Betty,
married Joseph BRADDOCK
in 1833 at St Michael’s and All Angels, Ashton-under-Lyne.
The BRADDOCK family originated in Derbyshire and came to
Mottram to run the Mottram coal mine which closed in the
1860s. Until then, it employed almost exclusively BRADDOCKS,
RHODES and GODDARD family members.
They had eleven children, and the fifth, Mary,
married her cousin, Miles
Goddard RHODES, brother of my great, great grandfather,
George, and eldest son of George
RHODES and Margaret
GODDARD.
It is Miles’
fifth child that is my direct link to the GODDARDs.
Margaret married my
great, great, great grandfather, George
RHODES, at All Saints, Glossop, in 1835. They had seven
children, the first son being Miles
Goddard RHODES mentioned above. Margaret
died in childbirth in 1848 when she and George
were living at Woodhead during the construction of the second
Woodhead rail tunnel, where he ran a beerhouse and a stone
quarry. The child, Margaret
survived, but she never lived with her father.
George married another
of Miles’ daughters, Charlotte,
again in Glossop, and less than three months after Margaret’s
death. The couple had nine children, giving George
a total of 16! Mention of the two marriages is made in a
later insolvency
case, particularly in terms of some sort of marriage
settlement of £40 for each marriage to the GODDARD
girls that has yet to be explained.
Miles’
ninth child provides another RHODES link. Jane
GODDARD married Matthew
RHODES, another of George’s
brothers. Although Matthew
worked much of his life as a miner, as did his brothers,
by the time of the 1881
census, he described himself as a “farmer,”
living at Lower Mudd, Mottram, and was there in 1891
where he died in 1897 at the age of 73.
The youngest daughter of Miles
GODDARD was Fanny and she
connects to the NUTTALL family who arrived in Mottram in
the mid-1800s from Crawshawbooth, Lancashire, to work in
the textile printing industry. Fanny
married John NUTTALL at St
Michael and All Angels, Ashton-under-Lyne in 1849. He
was Sexton at St Michael’s,
Mottram, from the 1870s until the 1890s, and was retired
by the 1901 census.
Their eldest daughter, Margaret
Ann, was the last landlady of the Black Bull’s
Head Inn, built into the side of the churchyard at St Michael’s,
before it was eventually closed by the vicar who disapproved
of alcohol on the premises!. John
and Fanny’s youngest daughter,
Emily, married Ervin
BOOTH, local dialect poet, and the couple were pictured
in Mottram in Old Photographs. In 1891, Emily
was living with her sister, Margaret
Ann, at the Black Bull’s Head, aged 19.
All in all,
the GODDARDs are of great interest to me, and I have managed
to find a few modern day descendants. If you recognise any
of the above, please contact me through the link below.
Ian Rhodes |
